Nikon D850 announced

Nikon has announced its keenly-anticipated D850 DSLR. Unlike most high-end DSLRs, which offer a stark choice between high-speed continuous shooting or high resolution, the D850 offers both. It’s designed to appeal to professional wedding, landscape, nature and fashion photographers but its abilities are so broad it could be used for practically any kind of photography.

The D850’s key specs are a 45.4-megapixel full-frame sensor and 7fps continuous shooting, which rises to 9 frames per second with the optional MB-D18 battery grip. This also offers a duplicate set of controls for vertical shooting. The only other camera to offer this combination of speed and resolution right now is the Sony A99 II. The continuous shooting speed would be of little value without a big buffer capacity, but the D850 can capture 51 RAW files in a burst, which is extremely impressive.

Other specs include an ISO range of 64-25,600, expandable to ISO 32-102400, and a 2350K-dot 3.2-inch tilting touchscreen which also offers touch-focus and touch-shutter control. This works in conjunction with the new camera’s silent shutter mode, where it uses an electronic shutter and makes no sound at all, even when shooting continuously at speeds of up to 6 frames per second. This could make the D850 perfect for wedding and social photographers, sports photographers and even wildlife photographers. There’s also a 5-megapixel mode that shoots at 30fps.

The D850 has an in-built focus stacking mode which can be programmed with the number of shots required and the focus interval between each, together with an in-camera 4K timelapse movie mode and an 8K timelapse mode for use with external software for super-high-quality timelapse movies.

The video capabilities should attract film makers too. The D850 shoots 4K video using the full sensor area, so there’s no crop factor to take into account and movie makers will get full benefit from their wideangle lenses. This is in contrast to the Canon EOS 4D Mark IV, one of the D850’s chief rivals, which shoots 4K video with a large crop factor.

The control layout mirrors that of its predecessor, the D810, and Nikon’s other professional DSLRs. The D850 is weatherproof and has a shutter life rated at 200,000 actuations. The EN-EL15a battery is good for over 1800 shots on a single charge, giving the Nikon a big operational advantage over rival mirrorless cameras. It has two card slots, one for the new, fast XQD format and another for SD/SDHC/SDXC, which is UHS-II compatible.

The D850 goes on sale on September 7th 2017 and will cost £3,499/€3,899.00/$3300.